Jimmy Carter went west on Sunday. He was 100.
It seems appropriate for him to pass on the Lord’s day off. I expect the Big Fella wanted to supervise the welcome wagon Himself.
Jimmy had a rough ride in the White House, but he may have been our best ex-president ever. George Washington is right up there for refusing to let a grateful nation king him. But ol’ Jimmy just kept on doing the people’s business, often with his own two hands, well into his 90s. The New York Times has an extensive obituary.
And he hung on long enough to vote against the pestilence-elect. It wasn’t enough, but we must consider it his last full measure of devotion.
I never voted for him. I went for Peter Camejo (Socialist Workers Party) in 1976, though Hunter S. Thompson had pronounced himself impressed by Jimmy in a lengthy screed in Rolling Stone that was republished in his collection “Gonzo Papers Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt.” Four years later, I voted for independent John Anderson in an Arizona newsroom full of young Reagan Republicans, and then fled the joint like a rat out of a garbage fire.
But damme if I don’t wish I had voted for Jimmy, at least once. Peace to him, his family, and friends.
Mad Blog Media 
The only president in the last 50 yrs to abstain from wealth and to set an example of service.
Carter was in a class of his own. Never succumbed to wealth or fame or ego. Just did the people’s business, both in and out of office. His presidency was snakebit, though.
He gave a campaign speech at the U of Rochester in the spring of ’76. I went to it. I think it was in the huge lecture hall where I endured inorganic and organic chemistry: Hutchinson Hall. I was quite impressed, as I was when Hyman Rickover gave at talk at Stony Brook when I was there. I voted for James Earl. Would do it again if he ran while dead.
He was the first president I was able to vote for, and he won. My overall record since then is of many more election losers than winners. Just more evidence that I am out of step with US voters and society here as a whole.
He was a man made of goodness — too good for this god-forsaken outfit.
Dale in Mid-MO
HST appended Jimmy’s Law Day speech, the one that so impressed him, to his Rolling Stone piece. It’s quite a read. Jimmy cites Bob Dylan, Reinhold Niebuhr, Leo Tolstoy, and a school principal, Julia Coleman.
That was a classy eulogy you just posted. Chapeau!
He had too much old fashioned character, honesty, and dignity for inside the beltway. Put on a sweater, turned down the thermostat, and put solar panels to heat water on top of the White House, and people made fun of him. Reagan took them down and said the Carter Energy Department didn’t produce any oil or coal. So, here we are. A man, an engineer who could solve problems and had a caring vision for the world, has left. And we are left with a pompous, arrogant, useless, and pathetic clown.
Worth mentioning that he was also an evangelical back when the term simply meant that you had found Jesus, symbolically born again, and wanted to tell people about your experience.
Instead of, you know, worrying about whether the 10 Commandments were posted in classrooms, and then not noticing that your copy had “©️1958 Paramount Pictures” printed on the bottom right margin.
Hoo-lawd, did we ever get tired of that crowd in Bibleburg. We knew a few quiet Christians who did the work. And then there were the others. …
“When people lose their sense of awe, they turn to religion. When they no longer trust themselves, they turn to authority.” Tao te Ching. Those two things go hand in hand it seems. “God will make it right, and if that doesn’t happen then the dumpster will fix it.” I heard that stupidity while waiting in line to vote, and it took everything I had to not ask why they were bothering to vote.